Zone.12 Although women workers were later recorded in their own right, unemployed

women in the Canal Zone never had any independent status.

A wife's status was based solely on her husband's employment; she was

granted government privileges, benefits, and identity in the Zone only on that basis. In

the eyes of the Canal Zone government, as with the military, women in Zone families

were "dependents," merely sharing their husbands' status and history. For example,

when the wife of Walter Van Dame, a former Panama Railroad employee, applied for a

pass during a trip back to the Zone, the governor refused, stating that "the passes you

had before were probably obtained by our New York office on the strength of Mr. Van

Dame's being a Railroad employee, and the possibility of getting these [passes] passed

when he severed his connection with the Panama Railroad."13 So with official

government records offering minimal material for piecing together the contribution of

women, history has generally emphasized the efforts of the men on the Canal, who

made up the majority of the workforce.

What little recognition the U.S. government has made of women's contributions

to the Panama Canal has been understated in the celebration of the accomplishments

of men. When the construction was completed, the chief engineer, Colonel George W.

Goethals, wrote that each woman on the site deserved credit for being "a real helpmeet

'1Memorandum from Chief Health Officer to Various Departments and Divisions, 8
August 1918, File 28-B-105 (Census of the Canal Zone-General, 1 September 1913-
31 January 1920); File 28-B-107 (Police Census of the Canal Zone, 1 April 1914-30
June 1915), The Panama Canal General Records, 1914-1934, Record Group 185,
National Archives.

13Governor M. L. Walker to Mrs. Walter Van Dame, 22 June 1927, File 28-A-6
(Associations, Organizations, Etc., of "Old Timers" on the Isthmus and in the
United States-General, 1 June 1925-31 December 1934),The Panama Canal
General Records, 1914-1934, Record Group 185, National Archives.

6

in the home, and an influence for good in the community," doing her duty to the nation

but in a different sphere.14 For putting up with the dangers and climate in the tropics,

President Theodore Roosevelt called the North American wife on the Isthmus "a better

fellow" than even the male worker.'5 In turn, these male workers were grateful for the

government's benevolence in providing for the "wives of its employees."16 Yet in the

face of a significant historical event, applauding good companionship and the

perseverance of women was but a faint compliment.

The memoirs and accounts by women who lived on the Isthmus, beginning with

canal construction, indicate that they, at least, saw themselves making history, not just

participating in it. Wives like Jeanette Ferris Brown joined their husband-workers in the

great engineering achievement. They too saw themselves as "Canal Builders against

the world," creating a new identity far from home "in a new field ... cut off from their

3How the "new" empire was a natural culmination of the expansion that saw the
confiscation of native American lands, slavery, and the conquest and partition of
Mexican territory is the subject of Lloyd C. Gardner, Walter F. LaFeber, and Thomas J.
McCormick, Creation of the American Empire (2d ed., 2 vols., Chicago: Rand McNally,
1976). Anders Stephanson's Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of
Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995) explores the spiritual underpinnings of Manifest
Destiny and places imperialism on the same continuum.

8John La Guerre, "The Social and Political Thought of Aim6 C6saire and
C. L. R. James: Some Comparisons," in Dual Legacies in the Contemporary Caribbean:
Continuing Aspects of British and French Dominion, ed. Paul Sutton (London: Frank
Cass, 1986), 202.

manner, British women who committed themselves to "improving" the lives of native

people often undertook a maternal role in trying to mold those people according to

European and Victorian ideals. In India, for example, some British women felt the need

to guide adult Indian women in the art of "proper" dress. They promoted the dress of

Western Victorian womanhood as more modest and superior to Indian attire, and, in so

doing, emulated the Empire's perception of the Indian people as infantile.9

Even British feminists who may have disputed the Victorian ideology of

womanhood at home seldom flouted their social conventions before native people. In

India, such women, though aligned with Indian reformers to uplift the status of native

women, could not escape their ethnocentrism and educate without Anglicizing.10 In

Africa, British women who spoke out against the exploitation of native women or who

defended the indigenous cultures nevertheless rarely called into question the

supremacy of Britain and Anglo-Saxon values in the hierarchy of civilizations and races.

The direct attempts by women to improve the life of colonial peoples were consistent

with traditional British ideals of justice, civilization, and womanhood.1

On the North American continent, U.S. women in the westward migration

packed their customs and values from home among their worldly goods. In the trek

across the continent, men and women sought new land for farming and mining, for new

markets, for free religious expression, among other interests. With the ideology of

Manifest Destiny and the U.S. war with Mexico providing justification for confiscating

"'Throughout the nineteenth century, Euro-American societies tied what it meant to be
a true" woman to her domestic roles. A "true" Victorian woman was one who took care
of her family and home. This restricted women's influence to a sphere separate from
that of men but it also gave women a unique moral standing in the eyes of society.

17

women made contact with indigenous wives on a personal level, a difficult encounter

for their missionary husbands due to Chinese custom. Under the gaze of Chinese

women, American women championed the cultural model of the "American Christian

family" and spoke to what they perceived to be abuses in China's gender ideology.

merely to "bestow upon them the best of our civilization without destroying all that was

good in the old."26 This interpretation was commonly given to U.S. cultural incursions

into indigenous traditions around the world. But Puerto Rican writers, such as Manuel

Maldonado-Denis, charge that the cultural goal of American power was, again, to make

"good North Americans" out of Puerto Ricans. 27

One woman who followed the flag early in the United States' occupation of

Puerto Rico revealed in her account an attitude that became common among those

North American women who were concerned that Puerto Ricans receive the blessings

of North American culture. In an article published at the close of the nineteenth century,

Mrs. Guy Henry, wife of the first U.S. military governor of Puerto Rico, wrote of the

United States' responsibility to all native peoples in its empire:

No matter to-day how or why they became ours-the ever-present
question is, What shall we do with them? Like Christian's pack,
they are strapped upon our back. When we lie down they must still
be with us. When we arise as a nation and travel onward they will go
with us. And we must carry the burden straight forward now to the end.28

Women like Mrs. Henry saw a "white woman's burden" in this new empire:

helping those whose conditions were deplorable, especially by North American, middle-

class standards. But this burden was more than a mission to help the poor and

unfortunate. As with club women back home, it was a mission to "Americanize" the

alien in his or her own land. Shortly after military wives joined their husbands in Puerto

differences of interests do not totally account for the separation. North American

cultural chauvinism became well entrenched through the years of U.S. presence on the

island, spreading eventually to elements of the Puerto Rican elite.

In both Puerto Rico and the Philippines, some North Americans did try to

conduct cultural exchanges with their island neighbors. As previously noted, the elites

of these islands often had ties to North American interests, so their social and cultural

paths crossed. But the lack of a separate, official North American civilian community

helped stimulate this spontaneous cultural exchange. With no formal U.S. reservation

other than military bases, North American civilians frequently lived near or in the more

affluent neighborhoods of the Puerto Rican and Filipino elites. Furthermore, those who

lived outside San Juan, Manila, or other areas of North American concentration, were

prone to even greater interaction with their native neighbors. W. Cameron Forbes notes

in his early account of U.S.-Filipino relations that in the provincial capitals and the

outlying cities, North Americans and prominent Filipinos were thrown together more

because the North Americans did not have sufficient numbers to form their own

societies.8 Most North Americans in Puerto Rico and the Philippines, however, saw

themselves as temporary residents, having no real reason to assimilate native ways.

Moreover, the colonial status of these islands and the direct cultural transformation

undertaken by U.S. authorities soon after the defeat of Spain reinforced this posture.

In some ways, the presence of the United States on the Isthmus of Panama

presents a similar portrait of U.S. imperialism to those in the Philippines and Puerto

Rico. United States power had intervened and insured order on the Isthmus since

1846. U.S. commercial representatives had built a railroad, established a town at the

"4Forbes, The Philippine Islands, vol. 2: 93.

28

Caribbean terminus, and propagated North American views in a bilingual Isthmian

newspaper, the Panama Star and Herald. In 1903, the United States had facilitated

and taken part in Panama's revolution against Colombia. The U.S. government had

seen its interests protected in a treaty with Panama by a non-Panamanian emissary of

the new republic. Shortly after the onset of the construction of the Canal, U.S. officials

instituted policies on health and security in the terminal cities of Panama and Col6n to

deal with conditions that could impact on the successful construction and operation of

the Canal. Through sanitation, disease control, and the construction of water facilities

and roads, the U.S. began to wedge its values into the new Republic of Panama.49

In the early years of the twentieth century, imperialist pride was present among

North Americans, even if such ardor was tempered by the belief that U.S. imperialism

had a benevolent character and a more indirect application than the European version

and by men like Mark Twain and William Jennings Bryan who opposed "empire" as

destructive to the "republic."5 The commercial and strategic benefits of the Canal to the

United States were covered extensively by journalists visiting the construction site.

49The building of the Panama Railroad is detailed in John Haskell Kemble, The Panama
Route, 1848-1869 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1943; Columbia,
S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1990) and Jean Sadler Heald, Picturesque
Panama: The Panama Railroad and the Panama Canal (Panama: Jean Sadler Heald,
1928). Jean Gilbreath Niemeier, The Panama Story (Portland, Oreg.: Metropolitan
Press, 1968) discusses the origins of the Star and Herald newspaper. Panama's march
toward independence is the theme of Alex Perez -Venero, Before the Five Frontiers:
Panama from 1821 to 1903 (New York: AMS Press, 1978). John Major, Prize
Possession: The United States and the Panama Canal, 1903-1979 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993) chronicles events leading to Panama's revolution.

50The anti-imperialist opposition in the U.S. Senate nevertheless succumbed to patriotic
rhetoric, commercial interests, and Theodore Roosevelt's claim that the U.S. role in
Panama's revolution was in "the interests of collective civilization" and ratified the 1903
treaty with Panama. Walter LaFeber, The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical
Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 40-41.

29

Travel writers such as William Scott also wrote of the cultural benefits the North

American presence would offer the region:

Panama now becomes the farthest outpost of Americanism in
Latin America .... The American conquest of Latin America should
be more through uplifting ideals than through bald commercialism
leading to discord and unbrotherly relations.51

This "conquest" by American ideals and culture certainly fit the benevolent view

of U.S. imperialism. In Panama, the United States viewed itself as going about its Canal

business under the gaze of its Latin American neighbors. Latin America was to be

uplifted vicariously by observing what the United States would accomplish on the

Isthmus of Panama. The U.S. presence would be "an outpost of a high civilization in

the tropics."52 Panama would be cleaned up physically and morally, but only as a by-

product to building the Panama Canal and establishing the Canal Zone. On the

Isthmus, Glenn Ward Dresbach composed a poem in 1913, reflecting what he believed

was Panama's proximity to the "blessings" of U.S. government and public health:

The Panama of pest-hole, harlot, lout
Is now no more. She stands,
With young, unfettered hands,
Greeting the world she lived so long without.53

Public opinion in the United States certainly felt that the presence of North

Americans would bring about stability in the new republic. North American efficiency

Yet such moral and cultural influence was a by-product of the Canal Zone, not

the rationale for its establishment. According to the 1903 treaty, the Canal Zone and

additional lands that may be needed outside of the zone were designated "for the

construction, maintenance, operation, sanitation, and protection of said Canal.""4 In

that function, the Zone provided a community life for its workers residing there. Given

that the United States considered the Panama Canal to be an "American" canal, the

Canal Zone was an "American" zone.

The Canal Zone was therefore a physical as well as psychological

representation of the United States-both for Zonians and for Panamanians. Canal

Zone legal codes and court systems were applied to both North Americans and

Panamanians within the confines of the Zone. In order for the residents of Panama and

Col6n or those from the eastern portion of the Republic to visit someone in the western

portion of the Isthmus, they were required to pass through this U.S. zone. Thus a

Panamanian could not cross the Canal Zone in the middle of his own country without

respecting Canal Zone and U.S. laws, courts, and police.

English was most valued as the language spoken within the Zone. It was also

the language for Panamanians conducting commerce with the Canal Zone. To get a

6Abbot, Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose, 403. Yet not all Latin Americans
considered the North American character of an isthmian canal to be beneficial. In the
1920s, Peru's Victor Raal Haya de la Torre called for the intemationalization of the
Panama Canal as part of the agenda of his American Revolutionary Popular Alliance
(A.P.R.A.) to redeem "Indo-America" and resist U.S. imperialism. See Thomas E.
Skidmore and Peter H. Smith, Modem Latin America (3d ed., New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992), 206.

wives and children to Panama. Overall, the French approach was more mechanical,

simply to build a canal with little regard for establishing community life. Conversely,

U.S. authorities, as North Americans increasingly brought disease under control,

recognized in women a benefit to both the construction and the long-term operation of

the Canal.

As the reader will discover, the role of cultural defender changed little as women

took up more permanent residence in the Canal Zone at the completion of construction.

In striving to maintain a comfortable and familiar environment for themselves and their

families, U.S. women, knowingly and unknowingly, became gatekeepers in the

boundary between North American and Panamanian cultures. In promoting North

American culture, they aspired to provide stability for their "American village," not for

Panama's benefit. Not until the end of the Second World War did an increasing number

of Zonian women significantly and systematically begin to reach across the boundary

and open the dialogue for a more reciprocal cultural exchange on an equal basis.

Despite that later cultural reciprocity, the belief in the superiority of North

American cultural values, generated and sustained in Zonians since the early years of

this century, has endured to this day on the Isthmus to some degree, in some form, and

in some circles. In their activities, North American women drew their cultural priorities in

the first half of the twentieth century more from life in the United States than from life in

the Republic of Panama. The geographical separation of the Canal Zone from the

"other" parts of the Isthmus fostered and reinforced this cultural chauvinism. With the

recent transfer of the Canal and the Canal Zone to Panamanian administration, that

territorial entity has been terminated. But a legislative act will doubtlessly not eradicate

as quickly a preference for "things American" so long ensconced in Isthmian life.

CHAPTER 2

THE ARRIVAL OF "THE LADIES, GOD BLESS THEM!"

Before the Canal was built, the achievements of the United States on the

Isthmus since the mid-nineteenth century set the stage for North Americans to assume

a culturally superior outlook in Panama. "Americans" had already conquered the

Isthmus by rail.1 "Americans" had helped Panama to attain its independence from

Colombia.2 By 1904, "Americans" were poised to succeed where the French had failed.

North Americans on the Isthmus were convinced of the efficacy of their methods.

Political and engineering success heightened their sense of U.S. cultural supremacy.

Yet women's potential contribution to continuing success was not apparent to

Canal authorities in 1904. Construction plans did not include wives accompanying U.S.

workers to "the Big Ditch," as neither the climate nor the work was deemed conducive

to family life. Ironically, it was the work itself, or rather the need for a stable workforce,

that eventually induced the Isthmian Canal Commission to be more receptive to the

presence of women. As a result, during the construction era, 1904-1914, U.S. women

'U.S. managers oversaw the construction, but most of the actual labor was performed
by Jamaicans. Jean Sadler Heald, Picturesque Panama: Panama Railroad and the
Panama Canal (Panama: Jean Sadler Heald, 1928), 88. The husband of Jean Sadler
Heald, S. W. Heald, was Superintendent of the Panama Railroad from 1908-1928.

2Given their multiple revolts against Colombia in the nineteenth century, Panamanians
bristle at the claim that without Theodore Roosevelt and the United States, Panama
would never have gained its independence. Alex P6rez-Venero, Before the Five
Frontiers: Panama from 1821 to 1903 (New York: AMS Press, 1978), 156-157.

40

arrived to "Americanize" the cultural climate on the Isthmus. In their domestic and social

activities, they helped lay the foundation for a way of life in the Canal Zone that

reflected the customs and values of the States more than those of the host country.

Regardless of the global implications in the motto of the Panama Canal, "the

land divided, the world united," the primary beneficiary of this waterway between the

oceans was to be the United States. Due to its geographical position, the Isthmus had

earlier been important to Spain as a strategic and commercial link between its imperial

holdings in the Atlantic and Pacific worlds.3 At the beginning of the twentieth century,

the U.S. viewed the potential Canal as a major component in its drive to join the forum

of imperial power. Alfred Thayer Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power upon History,

which was championed by Theodore Roosevelt, purported the Caribbean Sea to be an

"American Mediterranean." An isthmian canal would bolster an expansionist spirit and

foster a new navy of ships, coaling stations, and bases supporting distant colonies.4

That spirit first led North Americans to break through the Isthmian jungles by rail,

fifty years prior to canal construction. In 1846, U.S. diplomat Benjamin Bidlack secured

a treaty with New Granada (precursor to Colombia) whereby the U.S. guaranteed both

the rights of transit across the Isthmus and Colombian control over it.5 The Panama

Railroad was built to hasten the travel of North Americans from the eastern United

3The Isthmus' role in the commercial operations of the Spanish Empire is detailed in
Christopher Ward, Imperial Panama: Commerce and Conflict in Isthmian America,
1550-1800 (Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press, 1993).

4David McCullough, The Paths Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal,
1870-1914 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), 252-253.

STheodore Roosevelt used this guarantee of the "rights of transit" to justify U.S.
intervention in Isthmian affairs, even in Panama's Revolution in 1903. He ignored the
guarantee of Colombian control by declaring the treaty to be "a covenant running with
the land," despite who controlled the Isthmus. LaFeber, The Panama Canal, 34.

41

States to the gold fields of California and the territory of Oregon, both recent

acquisitions in U.S. expansionism. The U.S. negotiated the railroad concession with

New Granada to link up with two mail steamship runs to Panama authorized by the U.S.

Congress, from New York and New Orleans in the Atlantic and from California and

Oregon in the Pacific .6 To correlate with its Pacific terminus in Panama City, the

railroad built the Atlantic-side terminal city of "Aspinwall," so designated at the

suggestion of a Colombian official to honor the U.S. capitalist, William H. Aspinwall, a

major force behind the project.7 When the railroad was inaugurated on February 24,

1855, after six years of construction, the New York Mirror proclaimed that the task of

uniting two oceans was "conceived and executed ... in the frowning face of obstacles

that none but Americans could have overcome."8 The editor of the Daily Courier of

Aspinwall, "a loyal American," echoed this sentiment on the Isthmus:

From the inception to its consummation, it is purely American-
American genius conceived the plan; American science pronounced
it practicable; American capital has furnished its completion in spite
of the most formidable difficulties.9

The railroad created feelings of "second-class citizenship," however, in the

masses of Panama. Because U.S. officials viewed the natives as "apathetic and

unaccustomed to labor," they imported railroad workers.10 Though the railroad reduced

6Heald, Picturesque Panama, 86.

7Panamanians rejected mail sent to "Aspinwall," since their legislature had already
named the city "Col6n" in honor of Christopher Columbus. Perez-Venero, Before the
Five Frontiers, 65.

8Quoted in Heald, Picturesque Panama, 92.

91bid., 92-93.

10lbid., 87. The I.C.C. used the same rationale to import its workers. Peter Haines, "The
Labor Problem on the Panama Canal," North American Review 179 (July 1904): 50.

42

the stay on the Isthmus for U.S. travelers and thus their contact and friction with

Panamanians, it failed to eradicate the condescending attitude of North Americans. In

addition, a shorter stay meant less commerce and profit for Panamanian merchants."

French efforts to construct a canal in Panama from 1878 to 1888 accentuated

the Panamanian perception of North Americans as arrogant. The plans of Ferdinand de

Lesseps included hospitals, store-houses, machine-shops, and docks to support canal

construction but no design for a distinct community.12 Decades later, the nationalistic

The friend, if he is stronger and richer, must be master. .. [and] is not
obligated to respect the rules of courtesy ... towards his weaker or
poorer friend; he ... can appropriate the home of this weaker one,
... violate his rights and insult his modesty; whereas the poorer and
weaker friend is forced ... to sacrifice everything, goods, honor,
independence and character, to benefit the powerful friend.'"

France's failure to construct the Canal only underscored North Americans' self-

Canal Company) in Panama.'9 While U.S. visionaries shared the belief in scientific

innovation, "Americans," not just new machines, would save the day.

Before the U.S. could show the world its engineering capability, it had to

maneuver around the political climate in the region. By 1888, the French failure was

6McCullough, The Path Between the Seas, 240.

"'7bid. 237.

"The French were more reactive than proactive in fighting disease. Most accounts put
their losses at 19,000-22,000 workers. The British consul in Jamaica said the deaths
reported by the French actually represented only one-fifth of their actual loss. Lancelot
Lewis, The West Indian in Panama: Black Labor in Panama, 1850-1914 (Washington,
D.C.: University Press of America, 1980), 25.

was slated to be Panama's first president. Already victorious in the Thousand Days'

Civil War in 1900-1902, such men were set on consolidating their power on the Isthmus

through the revolt in 1903 and subsequent canal concession.23

With U.S. political and military weight behind the revolt, Panama achieved its

independence-but at a price: the loss of judicial and legislative sovereignty over part of

its territory in a treaty signed by a non-Panamanian. The revolutionary junta had named

as its minister-plenipotentiary Philippe Bunau-Varilla, the liaison between the junta and

Washington prior to the revolt. The French engineer signed the 1903 treaty on behalf of

Panama before Amador and his cabinet could arrive in the U.S. capital. Besides

granting the United States protectorate status over Panama, the treaty gave the U.S.

control over the Canal Zone, a parcel of land five miles on each side of the canal route

from the Atlantic to the Pacific, as if it were sovereign. As Thomas Pearcy put it,

"Panama thus began its republican era with a system of government that revolved

around a small urban elite whose ability to govern hinged on foreign military support."24

President Roosevelt wanted to dispel Panama's anxiety over U.S. colonial

aspirations. In a letter to Secretary of War William Howard Taft, he wrote:

We have not the slightest intention of establishing an independent
colony in the middle of the State of Panama..... Least of all do we
desire to interfere with the business and prosperity of the people of
Panama" through "a competing and independent community which
shall injuriously affect their business, reduce their reserves, and
diminish their prestige as a nation.25

23Pearcy, We Answer Only to God, 36.

241bid., 37.

25Major, Prize Possession, 100. At the signing ceremony for the 1977 Canal treaties,
Panama's Omar Torrijos reminded the U.S. of Roosevelt's words and added that, to the
contrary, a colony had indeed been established in the Zone. William J. Jorden, Panama
Odyssey (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1984), 454-455.

46

Yet to maintain a North American labor force on the Isthmus, a cultural as well as a

commercial colony evolved in the middle of the Panamanian nation. Like the Panama

Railroad and the Canal, the Canal Zone was considered an "American" achievement.

The longevity of U.S. families on the Isthmus-"Zonians"-perpetuated that "American"

cultural character in the Canal Zone.

From the beginning of construction, however, conditions on the Isthmus

mitigated against continuity in the U.S. workforce. Even as late in the process as 1911,

the average length of stay on the Isthmus for mechanics, for example, was only one

year.26 What had brought many workers to the project, a patriotic fervor and the desire

to make history while making expenses, soon succumbed to the fear that by coming to

the Isthmus they were sacrificing "all that [was] good and wholesome in the States."27

Labor representatives recommended that unskilled work be done by blacks since white

men could not long endure manual labor in the oppressive tropical climate.28 This

factor, and the racial prejudices of the time, contributed to an unequal, dual pay scale

and the perception that U.S. white workers were best suited for supervisory and skilled

work. Climate, disease, and exhausting, repetitive work induced many enthusiastic

Canal pioneers to return to the States long before the task was accomplished.

But as debilitating as the climate and work environment were, emotional

monotony, loneliness and the perception of cultural deprivation were even more

enervating. After work, there were relatively few avenues of amusement and recreation

for workers housed along construction. They tumed to make-shift cantinas near the

31Comments of U.S. Minister to Panama, John Barrett, to Star and Herald, 27 February
1905.

establishment of U.S. customs and cultural pursuits on the Isthmus. The Commission

believed that the wholesome and familiar surroundings of life in the States would boost

work efficiency. Secretary Joseph Bucklin Bishop wrote that to maintain a stable North

American workforce, the I.C.C. sought to make life on the Isthmus more attractive to

U.S. workers and to cultivate a spirit of public morality and order.32

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Western society still considered public

morality to be a "natural" interest of women. U.S. communities looked to their female

citizenry to preserve moral order.33 Yet despite the desire to suffuse the environment

with such order, U.S. officials, as their French counterparts before, initially did little to

encourage the presence of women at the construction of the Canal.

Duplicitous French treatment of West Indian workers set a precedent for

discouraging workers from bringing families to the Isthmus. The French Canal company

had publicized travel fares for families as an incentive for West Indians to labor on the

Canal. Those workers who migrated to the construction site with their wives, however,

discovered that the company had not provided nor would provide family quarters. The

dire circumstances forced families to live wherever and in whatever accommodations

they could find. Lack of family housing refuted the French "encouragement" of spousal

migration. Early in the U.S. effort, the I.C.C. mirrored the French behavior. 34

General George W. Davis, the first governor of the Canal Zone, 1904-1905, was

32Bishop, "A Benevolent Despotism": 312

33Schneider and Schneider, American Women in the Progressive Era, 14.

1But the I.C.C. did desire the immigration of West Indian women for domestic service
and as a stabilizing influence on its male West Indian workers. Velma Newton, The
Silver Men: West Indian Labour Migration to Panama, 1850-1914 (Kingston, Jamaica:
Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of West Indies, 1984), 95.

49

more direct than the French in trying to dissuade workers from bringing their families.

Yet I.C.C. headquarters in the States, like the French company, advertised free

quarters for both married and bachelor workers as an inducement to work on the

Canal.35 Without govemment sponsorship and housing, wives of U.S. workers who

nonetheless came to the Isthmus were forced to live in tents, railroad box cars, and

deteriorating French quarters, if not in privately-owned dilapidated shacks commanding

high rents.36 Canal officials were initially reluctant even to admit North American women

into the hospital wards, which had been designated only for men and "colored" women.

The I.C.C. did not construct a ward for white women in its Col6n hospital until 1908.37

The housing shortage was the main reason that Canal officials in Panama

wanted to deter workers from bringing their wives. In the early days of U.S. occupation,

the few North American women on the Isthmus placed little demand on Commission

resources. Housing of the higher I.C.C. officials in construction towns, especially in the

administrative township of Culebra, included sufficient space for their families. Nurses

were housed in the old French hospitals in Ancon and Col6n, where they worked.38

The I.C.C. also deemed it too expensive to build housing for its few women

that her division mandated that unmarried stenographers be in their rooms between

9:30 P.M. and 6:30 A.M., subject to a provost marshal's inspection.42 Whether to

protect the women or to prevent any behavior disruptive of the work at hand, I.C.C.

policies indicated that U.S. women generally did not belong in these surroundings.

39Memorandum from Superintendent of Schools to Visiting Commercial Clubs of
Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, 2 March 1907, File 91-A-37 (Miscellaneous
Information of Canal Zone or Panama Schools, 28 April 1906-15 May 1925), General
Correspondence, I.C.C., 1905-1914, Record Group 185, National Archives.

But the desire to maintain social order and a stable workforce compelled the

Canal Commission to approve and support the presence of women and families on the

Isthmus. When West Indian workers held a sit-down strike, saying "no women, no

work," U.S. workers said they shared the same attitude.43 The report of the Special

Labor Commission also pointed to problems inherent in an unaccompanied workforce,

stating that bachelors, "finding the monotony of the work under tropical conditions

unendurable, [were seeking ] amusement in the larger communities, where the saloons,

dance halls, and other evil resorts [were] the only social resource with open doors."4

It became apparent to government officials and contemporary observers alike

that the growing presence of women brought a stabilizing atmosphere of "home," the

prerequisite for a steady, proficient workforce. The value in married workers having

their families with them was pragmatic: contented married men stayed longer, lost less

time at work, and were more reliable and effective on the job. Travel writers, such as

Edwin Slossen and Garner Richardson, wrote of the emotional benefit of a worker's

having his family with him:

It is greatly to be desired that the number of women on the
Zone be increased. It would save the time of the men in
various ways, and also keep them from thinking too much
about themselves, their health and their comfort .... Worrying
about one's wife and children is bad enough, but does not have
so injurious an effect upon a man's disposition and efficiency.45

"Report of the Special Commission on the Conditions of Labor on the Isthmus of
Panama to the President of the United States, 6 August 1908, File 28-B-144 (Special
Labor Commission), General Correspondence, I.C.C., 1905-1914, Record Group185,
National Archives.

After the Canal was completed, Chief Engineer George Goethals viewed the benefit of

women more in terms of public moral order:

It is without a doubt true ... that the largest single factor in the
contentment, and therefore in the permanency and efficiency,
of these men was the policy of providing family quarters so that
they might have their wives with them on the Isthmus. ... In any
body of men removed for a long period from the restraining and
refining influence of women, there is inevitable deterioration.46

For the I.C.C., public morality and pragmatism were two sides of the same concern.

As the Commission increased the number of family quarters, the concept of a

married workforce began to change the landscape of the Canal Zone. Constructing

better housing for families than what was provided for bachelors fed the perception that

the government was actually encouraging marriage.47 The desire to maintain a stable

environment and to keep workers on site until the job was finished became the impetus

behind the government's family housing program. Married U.S. workers could even lose

their family quarters if they didn't get their families to the Isthmus promptly.48

Yet housing was not perfect for married workers. Only after 1908 were quarters

for workers and their families even close to being adequate, and then they were not

4Muenchow, ed., The American Woman in the Panama Canal, preface (no page
number).

47Abbot, Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose, 370.

"Mattie J. Morrison, "Mattie J. Morrison Tells of Pioneer Days on the Zone: Present Day
Comforts Were Unknown to Valiant Ladies Who Joined Husbands Here," part 1, The
Canal Record 23 (December 1989): 69. The 1906 Zone census set the ratio of white
females to white males at only 1:6. By 1911, the number of women had quadrupled
and the ratio was 1:3. J. LePrince, Paraiso Chief Sanitary Inspector to Colonel
William C. Gorgas, 4 October 1906; Memorandum from C. Luedtke, Assistant Chief
Clerk, to M. M. Thatcher, Chief, Department of Civil Administration, 25 September
1912, File 28-B-105 (Census of the Canal Zone-General, 1 September 1904-31 July
1912), General Correspondence, I.C.C., 1905-1914, Record Group 185, National
Archives.

lavish.49 In keeping with "progressive" social engineering, the size of quarters was

determined by a formula. The rate for the worker was one square foot per dollar of

monthly salary, His wife had to occupy the same space, and each child was allocated

an additional .05 square feet of space for every dollar of his father's salary multiplied by

the child's age. But housing was not adjusted quickly as families or salaries grew.50

Families arrived before quarters and furnishings were available. Fumiture supplied by

the I.C.C. was spartan, sparse, and long in coming. Yet the housing and furnishings

that married workers received exceeded that of their unmarried counterparts.

Although by 1906, wives of North American workers had the support of the

authorities to come to the Isthmus, they faced the same conditions that caused many

workers to leave before the job was done. The early nurses feared that they were going

to a place where "any white woman was sure of destruction."51 The main river, the

Chagres, cyclically rose over its banks and flooded the unpaved streets bordering

depot and men taking measurements of all new workers disembarking from the train.53

As with the men, U.S. women also felt deprived of the common items they were

used to in the States. The Commission placed the Panama Railroad commissaries

under its control in 1908 to provide familiar food, clothing and other objects deemed by

the government as necessary to U.S. workers for daily living.54 These commissaries

were also to offset the high prices local merchants charged, if they even stocked such

items. The Commission felt that if high prices continued unabated, they would force the

government to increase workers' salaries and thus construction costs.55

The commissary system, though, was far from efficient in these early days.

Women waited in lines to buy long-awaited goods. In 1908, with no cold storage, there

was little fresh meat or milk, and refrigerated vegetables had to be shipped from the

States.56 By the end of construction, the Canal Zone had solved the refrigeration

problem with its own cold storage plant and refrigerated railroad cars.57 But those

women who lived in townships with no commissaries had to place their orders by mail

with the closest commissary, await delivery on the next train, and then hope that what

was delivered was what they had requested instead of some unannounced

53Morrison, "Mattie J. Morrison Tells of Pioneer Days on the Zone," part 1: 68-69.

'Major, Prize Possession, 103.

55Albert Edwards, "Testing Socialist Methods in the Canal Zone" in The Amana Society:
A Study in Cooperation from the Viewpoint of a Socialist, ed. Allen W. Ricker (Girard,
Kans.: A.W. Ricker, n.d.): 72. The Canal Zone was a government reservation, with all
facilities and conditions for living provided by the U.S. government. With no private
ownership, employees of the Panama Canal lived within a "socialist" environment.

65Star and Herald, 30 March 1908. Biographical sketches of U.S. Canal employees
revealed that many I.C.C. nurses married fellow Canal workers both in and out of the
medical field. Marriage in the early days led to resignation from Canal employment.
Society of the Chagres: Yearbook, 1912 (Mount Hope, C.Z.: I.C.C. Press, 1912), 77-78,
98, 127-128.

rStar and Herald, 24 July 1905.

67Murdoch, "Ancon Hospital in 1904 and 1905": 52.

57

social and community life with familiar cultural organizations.68

The arrival of workers' families altered the leisure and recreational world of men

on the Isthmus. I.C.C. clubhouses, built for the diversion of male workers, now included

75Star and Herald, 12 July 1909. For the first time, Panama's government declared the
Fourth of July to be an official civic holiday. Panamanians, recalling their independence
and love of liberty, simply made the celebration their own. Grateful to the U.S., Panama
nevertheless wanted to be accepted on an equal basis with its northern neighbor. Two
years earlier, the newspaper recorded the holiday as the birthday of continental liberty,
tying the U.S., as exemplar of freedom, to the fight for independence by Latin American
republics. Star and Herald, 8 July 1907.

76The Canal Record 3 (December 29, 1909): 142.

59

schoolrooms and homes to represent the Christmas tree in the tropics.77 Because

seasonal foods had to be sent from the States, some women substituted local fruits

and native turkeys when the stateside items didn't arrive in time.78 Substitution and

8sMuenchow, ed., The American Woman in the Panama Canal, 38. The railroad-built
Episcopal church in Col6n was considered Anglican by the large number of West
Indians who also held services there, separate from those of the North Americans.

81Robert H. Rolofson, Christian Cooperation at the World's Crossroads (Canal Zone:
The Union Church of the Canal Zone, 1950), 71.

60

Association to unify worship and religious study among families in scattered towns.82

This produced a more coordinated and cooperative ministry among Protestants.

The drive to unify Protestant worship likewise kept alive the values of home in

the United States. Religious activities in the Zone brought Protestants closer to America

as well as to God and each other. As Maribel Weaver, an early Zonian, remarked,

people gathered at church to "sing hymns of the homeland, strangers, in a strange

country."83 Zone congregations imported Sunday School curricula from the States.

They organized men's and women's auxiliaries along stateside lines. Church calendars

of events generally paralleled those back home. Congregants tried to make the

religious week no different in the Zone than in countless towns in the United States.

The prologue to the church's history declared that the Union Church of the Canal Zone

symbolized "the genius and strength of [the United States], its non-divisive diversity, its

democracy, its vigor, and its spiritual heritage." Tied to its U.S. roots, the Union Church,

the prologue affirmed, "amid the strange culture of this far-off land,... would be a

monument to ... the deep devotion and prophetic wisdom of the founding fathers."86

The formation of these unified churches in the major towns of the Zone also intended to

convey to Roman Catholics in Panama and Latin America that the diverse Protestant

Christianity of the United States was not hopelessly divided.87

A symbol of U.S. Protestant values, the Union Church's primary purpose was to

sustain Protestant worship and "American" religious values in the Canal Zone. Its

purpose was not to convert Panama to Protestant Christianity. Women indeed

participated in missionary societies and supported church outreach on the Isthmus, just

as they had at home. But the first order of business was to build an "American" church

for "Americans" at the "Crossroads of the World."

This distinction was lost on North Americans who saw in the Protestant church a

85Rolofson, Christian Cooperation at the Word's Crossroads, 72, title page.

86lbid., 14.

871bid., 86. Protestant unity was additionally reinforced at the Congress of Panama in
1916, when denominational competition, which had weakened the Protestant mission in
Catholic Latin America, was replaced by a plan dividing Latin America into mission
territories. Panama was placed within the Methodist fold. Michael Dodson and Laura
Nuzzi O'Shaughnessy, Nicaragua's Other Revolution: Religious Faith and Political
Struggle (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 81, 82.

62

vanguard for social and theological enlightenment in Latin America. After the war with

Spain in 1898, U.S. propaganda perpetuated la leyenda negra, the "Black Legend" that

painted Spain with the brush of barbarism and decadence. Popular dogma recounted

how the Northern European Protestant version of Divine Providence had defeated the

Spanish and brought a higher civilization to the world.88 North Americans blamed the

illiteracy, poverty, and "backwardness" they found in Spain's former colonies on its

institutions: the despotic colonial government and the Roman Catholic Church. The first

was gone; the latter was not. By the time the Congress of Panama met in 1916, where

delegates from the "progressive" U.S. Protestant denominations discussed how

education could redeem Latin American society, the ties between Protestant thought,

modernization, and economic development had long since been established.89

Methodist Bishop George Miller, who spent years on the Isthmus during canal

construction, lamented that the influence of Protestant institutions in the educational,

social, and spiritual life of Panama was not far-reaching. He attributed this to the fact

that the major Protestant presence on the Isthmus, the Union Church, was situated in

the "wholly North American" Canal Zone and not within the Republic. With U.S.

institutions suspect in a "thoroughly Latin" Panama, Miller believed that locating the

Union Church alongside North American institutions decreased the likelihood that the

88Philip Wayne Powell, Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting United
States Relations with the Hispanic World (New York: Basic Books, 1971), 125.

89Jose Miguez Bonino, Faces of Latin American Protestantism: 1993 Camahan
Lectures (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997), 12. Latin
American "liberals" after independence from Spain sought trade with Northern Europe.
Seeking to modernize their nations, they viewed Protestantism as a factor in the
success of those industrial nations and a bulwark against Catholic hegemony. Dodson
and O'Shaughnessy, Nicaragua's Other Revolution, 66.

63

Protestant church could become a powerful force for change in Panama.9

But the overall goal of U.S. women was to match everyday life in the Canal

Zone with the flag that flew over it. Patriotism, which contributed to the decision of

many U.S. workers to enlist in the nation's engineering effort, affected their wives as

well. Pride in their native land helped dispel the fears of being surrounded by an alien

people and culture. Looking back, Mattie Morrison recalled her feelings when she first

arrived in Gorgona and saw "Old Glory," waving over the courthouse:

My heart overflowed with ... gratitude for what it represented:
safety and protection for all of Uncle Sam's children even in this
distant land. The ensuing years have proved that we were equally
safe under the Panama flag, a fact which we did not then realize.91

Progress on the Canal made U.S. wives believe that there was no limit to what

the United States could accomplish in the world.92 The fact that the Panama Canal was

a U.S. engineering project and that officials and supervisors were North Americans

tainted the wives' perception that construction was a white, "American" achievement,

notwithstanding the fact that most labor was performed by black West Indians, the

largest single group within the workforce.93 For Zone wives like Rose van Hardeveld,

faith in "American" progress remedied any doubts they had in being in a new land.94

Patriotism strengthened their resolve to make their overseas enclave "American."

Woman" of the era as a "quintessentially American," self-confident female who played

sports, rode bicycles and horses, and spent free time with men without chaperones.103

Similarly, U.S. women on the Isthmus typically were more informal, independent, and

bold than the women in Panama's upper classes.

It was not long, however, before U.S. culture, manifested by North Americans

on the Isthmus, began to encroach upon Panama's culture and to influence activities

on all levels of Panamanian society.'0 U.S. women pursued familiar cultural past-times

on the Isthmus. To keep slender, Zonian women played tennis, took swimming lessons

in "bathing places" along the Canal, rode horses in outlying areas around the towns,

102Jimnnez, "Panama in Transition": 54.

103Schneider and Schneider, American Women in the Progressive Era, 16.

'"Cultural images accompanied the influx of North American and European businesses
into the import-export economies of Latin America. Changes in the economy and in the
perception of women from developed countries moved middle-class Latin American
women to greater independence and participation in the work arena. See Susan K.
Besse, "Pagu: Patricia GalvAo-Rebel," in The Human Tradition in Latin America: The
Twentieth Century, ed. William H. Beezley and Judith Ewell (Wilmington, Del.:
Scholarly Resources, 1987), 103-117. Panamanian women did not "benefit" as quickly
due to Panama's lack of a modem economy. But the presence of the Canal ultimately
influenced women's transition into more middle-class jobs, as the Canal Zone exported
to Panama U.S. images of "modem" women.

67

and enrolled in gymnastic and dance classes. Uniquely "American" dances made their

appearances at community functions as women showed off the latest steps.

The publicity given such activities by Panama's newspapers increasingly

familiarized Panamanians with U.S. culture, in spite of the limited interaction between

the two societies. The reviews of this cultural invasion were mixed. In 1905, when the

Kangaroo Walk was in vogue among North American women on the Isthmus, the

bilingual Star and Herald expressed disappointment that young women of Panamanian

society were being drawn to this "latest product of the restless female mind" like "the

moth and the flame."'1 Yet only two years later, when the bicycle trend hit Panama as

a result of North Americans practicing the stateside craze, the newspaper responded

differently. As the I.C.C. paved more streets, U.S. women began to cycle in Panama

City and Col6n. The fad, which attracted mostly young Panamanian men at first, soon

included young women of the Republic, leading one reporter to announce that it was

time for the "Belles of Panama society ... [to] drop some of the old Spanish

conventionalities and declare themselves as the real twentieth-century article."16

Women as wage-eamers was a topic which distinguished the cultural

perspective of U.S. women in the Canal Zone from that of Panamanian women. In

1909, Panama's newspapers reported that in the United States, one-fifth of the women

had already abandoned domestic life and become wage-earners.107 The women of

Panama's upper classes were more averse to working outside the home than were

"OReport from Director General de Estadistic, Isidoro Hazera, to Secretario de
Fomento, 10 August 1912, File 28-B-106 (Census of the Republic of Panama, May
1905-May 1918), General Correspondence, I.C.C., 1905-1914, Record Group 185,
National Archives.

"'Chatfield, Light on Dark Places at Panama, 102.

112The Canal Record 7 (May 6, 1914): 356

13Chatfield, Light on Dark Places at Panama, 310.

69

The foremost reason for the government's reticence to bring women employees

from the States, the lack of housing, was overcome by the fact that female members of

U.S. workers' families were already in residence on the Isthmus. The employment of

U.S. women teachers illustrates this situation. As North American children increased in

the Zone, the Commission wanted to hire more U.S. teachers. Since male teachers

could earn better wages in canal construction and women were traditionally paid less

than men, the I.C.C. tried to lure women teachers to the Isthmus. But poor housing and

climate conditions discouraged them from coming.14 So the Commission hired women

from U.S. workers' families. In 1908, most of the twenty-five U.S. women teachers

appointed were wives or daughters of male employees living in the Zone."1 Women

were rarely chosen from Civil Service registers. If they could do the job, the I.C.C. and

the Panama Railroad hired them because they were already in place.

Nationality was an additional factor in the employment of North American

women in the Zone. Employment figures in 1912 reveal how U.S. workers were over-

represented in the better-paying positions of the Canal workforce. During construction,

workers from ninety-seven countries labored on the Canal."" North Americans made

up only one-sixth to one-seventh of the total workforce, counting from manual laborers

to officials."7 Yet U.S. men monopolized the higher-paid supervisory and skilled

114Memorandum from Chief Clerk, Department of Civil Administration to Chairman,
I.C.C., 16 July 1913, File 91-A-37 (Miscellaneous Information of Canal Zone or Panama
Schools, 28 April 1906-15 May 1925), General Correspondence, I.C.C., 1905-1914,
Record Group 185, National Archives.

15The Canal Record 1 (May 27, 1908): 310.

"6McCullough, The Path Between the Seas, 471.

17Marshall, The Story of the Panama Canal, 149.

70

positions. North American women similarly occupied the more desirable female

positions in the Canal Zone. Although only thirteen percent of U.S.-bom women,

fifteen years of age and older, living in the Zone were employed,18 they were

nevertheless given priority over other nationalities in the better-paid I.C.C. and Panama

Railroad positions. Those two organizations included only 321 women among their

32,513 employees, but of these, seventy-eight percent were bom in the States.119 Out

of the 4,066 women hired as domestics, small traders, agriculturists, and miscellaneous

workers in the Zone, but not by the I.C.C or Railroad, only thirty-four U.S. women were

so employed.120 Most of those lesser-paying jobs went to non-U.S. women.

Such statistics also give evidence of the social stigma against women working

and its impact on women's education in Panama. Of the 600 Panamanian women

employed in the Zone, most were hired as domestics, the traditional position of women

of the lower classes. Of the 1,037 Panamanians hired by the I.C.C. and the Panama

Railroad, only five were women.'21 At this time, Panama's undeveloped economy and

low level of urbanization and industrialization had not created more "modern" jobs for

women, such as the I.C.C. positions held by U.S. women in the Canal Zone. With a

lack of vocational training available to women in Panama, work options were limited.122

Under the educational system that was constituted at the birth of the new

The presence of the Panama Canal, and perhaps the I.C.C.'s employment of

U.S. women, influenced the rise of vocational training for Panamanian women and

provided another source of employment.125 In 1905, Canal workers began teaching

telegraphy classes to young Panamanian women. A Star and Herald reporter noted:

"Little by little the seioritas of Panama are awakening from their hereditary dignified

lethargy and realize that every sensible twentieth century lady has an axe to grind."'26

By 1910, a school of telegraphy was established in Panama, and women, heretofore

excluded from vocational training, were listed among the students.127 Despite different

cultural perceptions, such programs, at the very least, contributed to the increasing

number of women employed in Panama's government offices and bureaus.128

The cultural divide between North Americans and Panamanians, though, was

'23Marquez de Perez, "Gendered Jobs, Gendered Eamings in the Panamanian Labor
Force": 3. By the 1950s, Panamanian elite women would begin to enter the workforce,
usually in the higher levels of labor, such as banking and government.

124Star and Herald, 25 April 1904.

125World War I also opened Canal jobs to Panamanians, when non-U.S. citizens of
countries allied with the United States were admitted to various Civil Service exams "in
view of the needs of the service." The Canal Record 12 (October 9, 1918): 86.

'26Star and Herald, 3 July 1905.

'27Star and Herald, 26 December 1910.

128Star and Herald, 21 May 1909.

widened by language, or more accurately, by the pervasiveness of English on the

Isthmus at the expense of Spanish. To a greater or lesser degree, the preference for

English continued to hinder harmonious relations throughout the U.S. presence on the

Isthmus. English was the first language in the Zone and even in certain settings in the

Republic. After the Canal was completed, Zone officials encouraged the learning of

Spanish as important in understanding Panama and Latin America and for the

development of trade.129 Workers seeking to pass the Spanish language exam and

enhance their chances for promotion took Spanish lessons.3" Others felt that they

could better transact business in Panama if they had some facility in Spanish.

But convenience, perceived cultural superiority, and the lack of a foreign

language tradition among U.S. residents relegated Spanish to an optional language in

the Zone. When the Commission offered to assist any employee who wanted to learn

Spanish, it reported that no one made such a request, probably because "practically

everyone down here speaks English, and that language is all that is required for the

ordinary necessities."'31 The presence of English-speaking West Indians and the ability

of trades people in Panama to speak English only perpetuated this reluctance.

In Canal Zone schools, with students from northern and southern Europe, Latin

America, and the Caribbean, as well as the United States, teachers taught in English.

Initially, courses were to be taught in English and Spanish, and both English-speaking

and Spanish-speaking teachers were to be employed.'32 But since most students came

from the English-speaking Caribbean and the United States and it was difficult to find

U.S.-qualified teachers with Spanish facility, English dominated. Early on, Spanish

became a foreign language elective in schools in the middle of the Isthmus of Panama.

From the opening of Canal Zone schools, the educational priority for Zone

officials and U.S. parents was to duplicate and prepare their children for stateside

schools. This is noteworthy since only ten percent of the students were white North

Americans in a student body dominated by so-called "colored" children from the

Caribbean, Latin America, and southern Europe.33 During the French tenure, Jamaican

parents had established schools for their children and staffed them with teachers from

their own communities. Judging these early efforts as "meager" and "incompetent,"

Canal officials declared that "with the advent of the Americans,... a new impetus was

given to education in the Canal Zone."34 When possible, more U.S. teachers and

fewer Jamaican and Panamanian teachers were hired.'35 The Canal Zone public school

system was instituted to be "essentially American, with many American teachers,

American methods, American textbooks, American songs and literature ... and the

132Star and Herald, 1 February 1906.

133Memorandum from Chief Clerk, Department of Administration, for Chairman, I.C.C.,
16 July 1913, File 91-A-37 (Miscellaneous Information of Canal Zone or Panama
Schools, 28 April1906-15 May 1925), General Correspondence, I.C.C., 1905-1914,
Record Group 185, National Archives.

13Memorandum from Chief Clerk, Department of Administration, for Chairman, I.C.C.,
16 July 1913, ibid. Given that Jamaicans held education in high regard, U.S. prejudice
presumably played a part in this statement. Conniff, Black Labor on a White Canal, 18.

of Panamanian society. Canal Zone officials and U.S. diplomats, who socialized at

'3Unsigned and Unaddressed Memorandum, Executive File No. 7383, 1 August
1906, File 91-A-37 (Miscellaneous Information of Canal Zone or Panama Schools, 28
April1906-15 May 1925), General Correspondence, I.C.C., 1905-1914. The Canal Zone
school system was "American" in another aspect. Zone schools were integrated when
they first opened in 1906, but by 1909, separate "colored" schools were in place. The
latter schools stressed agricultural, industrial, and practical courses, mirroring Jim Crow
school segregation in the United States. The Canal Record 3 (November 10, 1909): 86.

'37The Canal Record 7 (July 8, 1914): 459.

38""Canal-Diggers' Wives Were Pioneers of Tropical Brand of Housekeeping": 67.

139Star and Herald, 25 December 1905.

affairs with their counterparts in Panama, asked Zone workers to attend Panamanian

celebrations and parties when invited.'1 Yet, apart from the North American officials,

the Panamanian elite looked upon U.S. workers as beneath its social standing.

Likewise, Canal workers were as aloof from the lower urban masses as Panama's elite

were. Consequently, most Zonians kept to themselves, isolated from the unaccepting

elite of Panama and isolating themselves from the unacceptable lower classes.

The self-imposed segregation of U.S. workers and their families from the lower

classes of Panama fit the social conventions of Panama's racial hierarchy. Latin

America has a tradition of perceiving white-skinned people as superior to darker-

skinned persons. The impact of European racial theories and social Darwinism on the

"whitening" of Latin America has been documented by historians.'41 In its censuses,

Panamanians who believed in the superiority of whiteness found an ally in North

American women. As U.S. women arrived on the Isthmus, advertisements in the Star

and Herald praising the virtues of women portrayed their subjects as Anglo-Saxon

women in Victorian attire. One reporter observed that Panamanian women were

wearing a lot of powder on their faces, with the general rule being that the darker the

complexion, the more powder should be applied.'47 For U.S. women, racial identity was

as much of an issue as cultural identity. Housing along the construction line was initially

'43Hibbard, "The Early Days of Panama, A Sketch."

"4Abbot, Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose, 280-282.

145Gause and Carr, The Story of Panama, 250. In calling Panama's elite "Spanish,"
these writers, who were also Canal Zone school officials, either were reflecting the U.S.
tendency to lump Spanish-speaking peoples together as "Spanish" or were mirroring
the European self-bias of Panama's elite.

146Heald, Picturesque Panama, 70.

147Star and Herald, 3 February 1908.

not as racially segregated as it would become in the future. So it was not surprising

when Rose van Hardeveld declared her excitement at the prospect of getting a white

female neighbor, even if she was neither North American nor could speak English.148

How U.S. wives in this early period related to the lower classes of Panama, the

women of the West Indies, and indigenous tribes indicates that most perceived the

"American" culture, if not the white race, to be superior. To build "protective walls

against the threatening strangeness of other people and to legitimize the boundaries

and terms of intergroup contact,"149 Zone women used the racial stereotypes reflected

in U.S. foreign policy to justify racial and cultural subordination. Most mestizos with

whom Zonian women came into contact lived in the jungle regions along the route of

the Canal. Van Hardeveld viewed these poor people to be without ambition and

ignorant of the real need for building the Canal.'15 Natives in the path of the rising man-

made lake who had to be convinced to move, according to Elizabeth Kittredge Parker,

were "unimaginative,"151 notwithstanding the fact that the poor mestizos did not benefit

from the Canal but only suffered from being dislocated by it. Van Hardeveld also said

that she felt sorry for the "little brown mothers of the jungle" and built a relationship with

one such mother over her sick child. But the charity of Zone mothers was generally

permeated with their belief in the superiority of U.S. child-caring methods.152

161Many of these women were in common law marriages. In the West Indies, formal
marriage was mainly available to those who were financially well-off. Poverty and
mobility in search of employment made a stable family life a practical impossibility for
many. In the face of charges from the States that such women had been imported as
prostitutes, an I.C.C. investigation concluded that they were simply wives of laborers.
But the women still had to appear before the Commission to attest to their morality.
Williams, "La mujer antillana en la construcci6n del Canal," La Prensa (8 March 1991).

80

between maids and their U.S. employers were mostly due to the lack of knowledge

each had about the other's culture. But the wives' expectations that their maids should

immediately understand what took place in a North American household illustrated the

ethnocentric perspective from which U.S. women viewed other Isthmian cultures.

The longer some North American women resided on the Isthmus, however, the

more they understood that the difficulties in comprehending another's culture were

mutual. Such women also came to appreciate the strengths of women from other

cultures.162 The "civilized" home, of which Elizabeth Parker had said her maid was

ignorant, later was said to have benefitted from West Indian ways that outshone North

American methods. For example, her maid more effectively cleaned the ubiquitous

white tropical suit by washing and drying it on the grass than by boiling the material as

was the U.S. custom.16 Rose van Hardeveld began to understand the benefit of West

Indian "wailing" to bring emotional relief when she herself broke down amidst the stress

of living on the Isthmus.'4 Some of the same U.S. women who patronized native and

West Indian women gradually viewed them as representing "another way." As Emma

(Eger) Bradley wrote about the Kuna, their "ever free and easy life without hurry or

bustle made me compare it with our own contenual [sic] rush, worry, jealousy and

greed and I couldn't help but say to myself which is richer."165 But this occasional

162A similar emotional change took place within some white women in the western
frontier of North America. The longer they lived near native Americans, the more their
feelings moved from discomfort and pity to understanding and appreciation of native
customs. See Riley, A Place to Grow, 132-133.

163Parker, Panama Canal Bride, 33-34.

'"Hardeveld, Make the Dirt Fly!, 52-53.

165Bradley, "The San Bias Indians": 10-11.

cultural appreciation did not displace U.S. cultural chauvinism. The tension between

cultural understanding and cultural chauvinism would persist in Zone women.

As North American women became more settled on the Isthmus and as

stateside customs and lifestyles became more established in the Zone, women felt

more at ease with their surroundings. Wives strolled with their husbands amidst the

Panamanians in the city parks. Rose van Hardeveld and other mothers, who had

feared raising their children among "a hodgepodge of humanity whose ideas and

customs were so different and unfamiliar," now explored and enjoyed the foreignness

of the land and its people.'" It was, however, the awareness that an "Americanized"

and domesticated environment in which to raise their families was being established,

with women's help, that undergirded their degree of comfort. As Gardner Richardson

noted on his visit midway through the construction of the Canal:

Light-haired American children were playing games under the
palm trees.... Baby carriages were being wheeled along the
water front.... A spectator might easily forget that he was in
Panama, for all the customs in the States are loyally followed.167

The manner in which U.S. women organized their activities influenced the

cultural climate on the Isthmus during the construction of the Canal and beyond.

Organizations gave women a more collective voice in community affairs, despite the

fact that the Canal Zone was a reservation of the U.S. government. Organizers also

hoped that these associations would provide a defense against social classism and

other divisive factors that were isolating Zone women from each other. The replication

of "American" women's organizations on the Isthmus not only helped inculcate North

American cultural values in Zone communities but gave women experience that would

prove beneficial to volunteerism during the First World War. The separation of these

organizations from their Panamanian counterparts, however, implied a cultural elitism

that further segregated the activities of Zonians from those of their Isthmian neighbors.

Certain conditions in the Canal Zone made civil organizations imperative if

Zonians were to have a say in their daily lives. Herbert and Mary Knapp correctly

described the government in the Zone as a form of "authoritarian socialism."' Since

politicking was forbidden in the Canal Zone, the Knapps conclude that voluntary

organizations kept alive the sense of democratic procedures as well as mediated

'Knapp and Knapp, Red, White, and Blue Paradise, 78.

83

between the individual and the government.2 Even Zone authorities encouraged the

self-initiative of these clubs, declaring that too much governmental paternalism would

not be conducive to good results.3

Zone organizations also infused individuals with a sense of power when

confronting the equality mandated by this form of government. Alexis de Tocqueville

wrote of the tyranny of equality in the U.S. and the protection afforded by associations:

Among democratic peoples associations must take the place
of the powerful private persons whom equality of conditions has
eliminated.
As soon as several Americans have conceived a
sentiment or an idea that they want to produce before the world,
they seek each other out, and when found, they unite. Thenceforth
they are no longer isolated individuals, but a power conspicuous
from the distance whose actions serve as an example; when it
speaks, men listen.4

A government-instituted "sameness" pervaded all aspects of Canal Zone life. To rebel

against it was to invite correction by an authoritarian government. Resorting to a social

hierarchy to offset such equality threatened to disturb the "American" identity that

united Zonians and the outward image that all U.S. citizens were equal. Social and civic

associations, on the other hand, differentiated residents without rejecting institutional

"sameness" or disrupting the Zone's "American" image.

From the earliest days, the North American community on the Isthmus had its

share of associations whose primary purpose was social. Most social clubs manifested

the Anglo-Saxon, middle-class culture of the United States. Male and female workers

during the construction period formed societies to keep alive the memories of those

days.5 The American Social Club was organized for the amusement and recreation of

white employees, and the women who graced the affairs of that club insured that every

occasion had all of the characteristics of home.6 Among others were the Tivoli Club for

dances, the Ancon Amusement Association, and the Pan-Hellenic Society of the Canal

Zone for members of college fraternities back in the States.7 Clubs were informally and

formally organized around dining, card-playing, and even the minority status of female

bachelors.8 The desire to be noticed in a climate of "sameness" was seen in names like

"The Card Club of Twelve" and "The Elite Club of Las Cascadas."9

Though Zonians became adept at organizing their leisure time, not all societies

were centered around social activities. As in the States, men and women joined groups

that improved the welfare of both the Canal Zone and Panama. Not long after a branch

of the American Red Cross opened in the Canal Zone, a woman's auxiliary was formed

to enlist North American women in Red Cross campaigns.'o Zonians also saw an

opportunity to import and teach humane methods for dealing with animals, children,

5Scott, The Americans in Panama, 220. Workers who worked continuously for six years
during construction could join the Society of the Chagres. Those who had been on the
job from the very beginning could become members of the Inca Society.